The present invention relates to an automatic film feeder for an automatic developer.
In a photographic plate-making or other photographic operations, a photosensitive film exposed is successively passed through a developing tank, a fixing tank, a washing tank, and a drying tank of an automatic developer, thereby completing a developing process of the film automatically. Such an automatic developer which is capable of saving the operations very much in a darkroom, has been used broadly.
However, this kind of automatic developer still involves a manual operation therein. For example, in most of automatic developers now realized the film exposed is fed manually one by one to a conveyer means of the developer. In this case, the transfer speed of the film depends on the developing time and the transfer length in the developing solution, and usually it is a low speed such as between several and scores of milimeter per second.
When only one film is processed, after feeding the film into the conveyer means the film is transferred automatically and thus all is well. However, in practice, at least several films exposed are consecutively processed in the developer. Especially, when one automatic developer is used in common for a plurality of exposure means such as process camera, a plurality of films exposed must be fed manually one by one to the developer.
The automatic developer cannot process more than two films in parallel at the same time except that the two films of small size are fed in parallel. That is, after one film is completely passed through the start point of the transfer conveyer, the following film is fed to the conveyer.
However, since the film transfer speed is rather slow as described above, it takes fairly long time to feed the film completely into the conveyer. When the film photographing in the plate making operation is carried out, generally, the reproduction picture having the same size as required to the final printed matter is photographed. A photosensitive film having a relatively long size such as more than 25 centimeter is often used, and accordingly in almost all cases it takes more than ten seconds to feed the film completely into the conveyer. This time means only a stand-by time for the operator, which is rather waste of time. Further, this developing operation should be performed in the darkroom, and thus it is not good for health.
In a conventional developer for processing a X-ray film exposed, an automatic feeder which insert the film having a certain size stacked one on another has been developed. However, in the plate making the films of different sizes are processed and hence this kind of automatic feeder cannot be utilized.